The students of California State University, San Bernardino celebrated the end of their academic year recently with the annual Coyote Fest. This outdoor event featured fairground rides and attractions, food stalls, and a main stage hosting DJ sets and a headline performance from Latin-pop singer-song writer Carmen DeLeon. Production for the stage was supplied by local rental company Props AV, which utilized ADJ’s Focus Profile automated luminaires and Jolt Panel FX multifunction blinder / strobe / eye candy fixtures to create a dazzling display of lighting. In addition, the company deployed 72 of ADJ’s VS3IP LED video panels to form a big screen at the back of the stage as well as to provide a façade for the DJ table.
Props AV has supplied technical services to a variety of events at California State University, San Bernardino over the past 10 years and has served as the production company for the annual Coyote Fest since its inception. For this year’s event, Props AV supplied a full package of lighting, video, and audio equipment rigged on a 40’ trailer stage. At the heart of the setup was an LED video screen constructed from 60 of ADJ’s VS3IP LED panels. In front of this, covering the stage decks being utilized as a DJ table, was an additional rectangular screen comprised of 12 further VS3IP panels. Both display surfaces were used for ambient visuals to provide a backdrop to the performances as well as to show artist and event logos.
“Every time we take the VS3IP panels out to an event we are astonished by how bright they are,” enthuses Tommy Frisch, who served as Production Manager for Coyote Fest. “Compared to other panels that we’ve used, these are easily the best we’ve had in our inventory. As we do a lot of outdoor shows, brightness – as well as the IP rating – is very important, because we’re often competing with daylight. There are other good panels on the market, but they tend to be for indoor use, so don’t have the IP rating or the brightness to cut it outdoors. The picture quality is also very good, and they are very easy to set up. The pop out corner guards have been my saving grace on many occasions. As a guy who is running and gunning, I’m gonna bump those panels from time to time but the corner guards have saved me from doing any damage. The panels are super quick to rig and everyone on the team has commented about how the handles just seem to be in exactly the right places! You can easily hold up the unit with one hand and lock it into place with the other. With some panels we’ve used in the past, it’s felt like if you took one hand off it would fall. But on the VS3IP, every handle is sturdy and in the right place. It’s a really great panel that we all love to use.”
The main moving head fixture used for the Coyote Fest lighting rig was ADJ’s Focus Profile. A total of 12 of these units were utilized for the event, split evenly between the downstage and midstage trusses. A professional caliber automated profile luminaire, the Focus Profile is powered by a potent 400W LED engine, allowing for an impressive output of 20,000 Lumens. It offers an exhaustive collection of beam-shaping tools, which include four (independently controllable) rotating framing shutter blades, full CMY color mixing together with variable CTO color temperature control (2700K to 6700K), a separate color wheel, two GOBO wheels, two rotating prisms, a replaceable frost filter and an animation wheel.
“The Focus Profiles really kick ass,” sums up Tommy. “They can get so wide, and they are still so bright when they are out wide, that you can really do a lot with them. They are great for aerial effects; there really is so much you can do with them. As an example, Chris [Eguizabal, the LD on the show] used a lot of GOBO rotations and would fade between fixtures going in one direction and then the other. At other times he’d have them spin really fast on one beat and then slow right down on the next. Zoomed in, they can also create nice tight beams and Chris was hitting trees that were 400-500 feet away and you could see the GOBO patterns clearly in the leaves! They are awesome fixtures that we love using.”
Evenly spaced across the front of the downstage truss, pointing out at the audience, were six of ADJ’s versatile Jolt Panel FX fixtures. Combining intensely bright white strobe LEDs and zone-controlled vibrant color mixing LEDs, these multifunctional luminaires deliver lighting designers a huge amount of creative potential. Each panel incorporates 48 x 5-Watt cool white SMD LEDs, surrounded on both sides by a total of 800 x 0.3W RGB SMD LEDs. Both types of LED are grouped into independently controllable zones (6 white and 40 color), allowing for the creation of eye-catching animated chase patterns.
“Because we knew this show would be DJs and a Latin artist, we felt that using the Jolt Panel FX up front instead of a traditional warm white blinder would be the way to go,” explains Tommy. “That allowed Chris to light the audience like a blinder would when it was needed, but also gave him the flexibility of a super bright white strobe and the ability to create pixel-mapped effects, which were more appropriate for the performers. We were particularly impressed by the beam angle on those things. At first, I had the guys rig them tilted down to make sure we were hitting the front row of the crowd, but then we had to tilt them back as we were actually hitting the stage as well! We love those things; in fact, off the back of this show, we just ordered 12 more!”
In addition to the ADJ fixtures, the lighting rig incorporated twelve Rayzor 760 LED wash moving heads from sister company Elation Professional. Tommy and the team from Props AV also utilized four of ADJ’s powerful Entour Venue atmospheric generators to fill the stage with beam-enhancing ‘faze’. Offering a hybrid between a conventional fog machine and a regular haze machine, this portable unit uses economical water-based fog fluid but disperses it thinly over a much wider area to create the perfect atmosphere for vibrant aerial effects. Despite its compact form, the Entour Venue offers a huge output of up to 15,000 cubic ft. per minute thanks to its high-speed fan and powerful 1500W heating element.
“Those things blow me away every time we take them out,” says Tommy. “This was a completely outdoor show, and we were dealing with quite a bit of wind, but, as you can see from the photos, we had plenty of haze to really make the beams stand out nicely all the way to the back of the crowd. The output on the Entour Venue really is impressive, every time I take them out I’m impressed by how easy it is to haze outside these days. And they don’t eat fluid either. With our old set of hazers, we’d have to fill them up two or three times during a four-hour show like this. These guys came back to the shop two thirds full from a single tank!”
Coyote Fest 2023 proved to be a resounding success, with large crowds gathering to dance to the DJ sets and listen to Carmen DeLeon’s energetic performance. Tommy and the team from Props AV delivered all the artists’ technical requirements flawlessly and the event also provided a perfect showcase of both ADJ’s lighting and LED video technology. It demonstrated the potential of the brand’s range to cover all the requirements of a large outdoor festival stage, including video wall, moving heads, blinders and atmospherics, utilizing exclusively LED-powered solutions to offer maximum efficiency and reliability.
Event
Coyote Fest
California State University, San Bernardino
Production Manager
Tommy Frisch
Lighting Designer
Chris Eguizabal
Lighting Vendor
Props AV
www.propsav.com
Photography
Heather Beymer - HBMR Productions
Gear List
72 x ADJ VS3IP
12 x ADJ Focus Profile
6 x ADJ Jolt Panel FX
4 x ADJ Entour Venue
12 x Elation Professional Rayzor 760
